Pollock And DeKooning

Sebastian Smee's description of artists in their rivalry ends with that of Jackson Pollock and William DeKooning which is the beginning of abstract expressionism and the American dominance of Western art.  Tedious is all I have to say.  Both men were even more than usually for artists egomaniacs, Pollock a tragically compromised alcoholic whose behavior while drunk and he was seldom sober, exhibited a level of brutality that is breath taking, and I wonder why those around him tolerated it.  I know, I know, genius and all that.  But I cannot take unfettered and wanton brutality as a comrade's modus vivendi.  I find non objective painting fine enough for wall decoration.  Mark Rothko once accepted a commission for paintings that were to go on the walls of the Seagrams Building and then had a temper tantrum at the thought of his "deep, meaningful" stuff being considered "decor."  Fine, that's just what I think it is. Abstract art is anything you want to see in it Smee says DeKooning's mother was so brutal that it was only reasonable that he would grow up to paint one after another woman with ugly menacing faces.  Fine, but I do not have to look at them.  Nor am I taken with his endless black strokes. It is too much of an effort to ward off the brutal strokes as they descend upon me the viewer.  Nor can I take Pollock's drip paintings, yes, one in awhile but they are monotonous.  I do not have to suffer the stern injunctions of Clement Greenberg who told everyone in that period what they were to look at and think.  He is not the high priest of my aesthetics.  Nor Harold Rosenberg, both of them fascists of art criticism, determining what a painting should mean, sometimes telling artists what they were to paint.  What a bankrupt age!  Art fell into the hands of dealers and collectors far more intent on profit and prestige than anything before, and it has never recovered, although as long as there is a class of nouveaux riches there will be art, art criticism, and art auctions.  That is why one loves Agnes Martin for separating herself from the scene.  Everything about her oeuvre spells sanity.  One of the great days of my life was a visit to a show of her stuff at the Pace Gallery and upon leaving I dropped down to another gallery showing an artist I had never heard of-- Jean-Michel Basquiat.  The sight of his canvases on the gallery's walls after the serenity, control, and under statement made into over statement which was Agnes Martin, Basquiat's color, shapes, and violence were like a fabulous and much needed orgasm.  I will never forget that day.